News / 14 year old rape victim from Warsaw denied abortion! [348]

Without pretending to know the real facts in this particular case:

Any woman has the absolute moral right to terminate a pregnancy that results from violence against done against her person just as she has the moral right to terminate a pregnancy that threatens her life or health.

The moral status of the fetus in both cases is immaterial and irrelevant.

News / 14 year old rape victim from Warsaw denied abortion! [348]


So women have no right of self-defense or authority over their own bodies?

Please enlighten me on your reasoning.

News / 14 year old rape victim from Warsaw denied abortion! [348]


If the very existence of the 'innocent person' (known to most people as a non-sentient clump of cells) is the result of violence, it has no inherent right to use the body of an unwilling adult for its sustenance and birth.

If a woman has the right to kill a rapist in self-defense then surely she has the right to not tie herself to him biologically. Otherwise, women are just hatcheries for any many who can impregnate them (in any way).

UK, Ireland / ARE YOUNG BRITS LESS INTELLIGENT THAN POLES? [56]

IME usually an average Polish university student has no problem in transferring and doing well at a typical US or UK university, this includes dealing with the language barrier.

An average US university student would not be able to cope at a typical Polish university, not including the langugage barrier.

FWIW

UK, Ireland / ARE YOUNG BRITS LESS INTELLIGENT THAN POLES? [56]


I did not say it does. I used words like 'average' and 'typical'. Let's look at that quote again:

"an average Polish university student has no problem in transferring and doing well at a typical US or UK university"


Your reading comprehension suggests otherwise.

USA, Canada / I might be moving to Florida.... [36]

As a native-born Floridian I feel qualified to comment on my home state...

The good ...

Climate: At least on the coasts, inland it's hot and humid and sticky.

Coasts: There's no bad coastline in Florida, it's all interesting or beautiful in one way or the other.

Variety: There's actually about five different Floridas. There's Miami-Cuban Florida, Old people Florida, Old South Florida (paradoxically in the north of the state), Cracker Florida, Cowboy Florida (yeah, there are real cowboys in Florida, always have been)... Plus there's lot of interesting local varieties and subcultures.

Food: In terms of raw ingredients, there's lots of fresh vegetables year round and great seafood, lots of interesting ethnic food

The bad...

Yankees: Lots of folks move from the North to Florida and then go around telling people how they did things 'back North'. Locals hate them.

Crime: Typically half or more of the cities with the highest rates of crime (including violent crime) are found in Florida.

No live culture: Things like theater, concerts, you know live cultural events are few and far between once you get outside of a couple of big cities. Get used to watching tv and plenty of it. There's not much else going on.

Bad infrastructure: Drinking water is low quality, and the construction industry creates infrastructure needs that it can't fill. The philosophy has always been build now, let someone else worry about infrastructure.

Low pay: No state income tax and no unions and lots of untrained people (local and imported) who'll be glad to work for less than you.

Cars: Because of the philosophy of building out and not up, hardly anywhere in Florida has anything like public transportation and in most places bikes are not feasible. So, you've gotta drive to do anything. Lots of retirees when they get too old to drive become horribly lonely shut ins.

Tourists: For three or four months they clog up everything and add their cars to the general turmoil on the roads. They make up one of the state's biggest industries and locals hate them.

Varmints: Two meter long rattlesnakes that are liable to show up anywhere (and which are all but invisible when coiled in the bushes), alligators, sharks, stingrays. Florida has many animals that want to kill you. Mosquitos are only kept in check by massive insecticide use (which probably has some bad effects of its own)

Food / Polish (but can be just any other) recipes for chicken dishes anyone? [23]

Two simple recipes, one sort of Polish, one sort of Thai.

Sort of Polish (similar to potrawka, a kind of ragout)

Cut one chicken breast into small cubes.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil in the bottom of a pot. When the oil is hot, add fresh ground black pepper. Remove from heat to add chicken pieces (otherwise the oil will splatter). Then replace back on medium heat.

After the chicken pieces are done, add two tablespoons of flour and stir. Add in a cup or so of boiling water and stir until the flour and water have mixed into a smooth mixture.

Add one package of soft cheese (serek, I usually use onion flavor) and stir till smooth. Serve over pasta or rice.
Thats the basic recipe which you can modify in a hundred ways, by adding vegetables (onions, carrots, mushrooms) to the chicken or other herbs or spices to the sauce. For a 70's retro flavor, add a few tablespoons of vermouth.

sort of Thai.

Cut one chicken breast into small cubes.
Wash and pick leaves of fresh Thai basil (not the same as Italian basil at all, in Warsaw you can find it at oriental grocery stores). how many leaves you use if up to your taste, start with about 12 and then increase or decrease to taste.

Heat a few tablespoons of oil and add chicken. Add pepper (white, black or my favorite green), a teaspoon of sugar and a tablespoon of fish sauce (yes, it smells nasty when you first add it, but you'll get used to it and soon won't be able to live without it).

Add two or three fresh or frozen lime leaves (also availabe at Asian grocery stores). Add two or three spoonfuls of Thai shrimp and chilli paste and stir well. Add about a half cup to a cup of water (depending on how watery you like your sauce) and bring to a boil. Throw in the leaves, stir once and remove from heat immediately. Let sit covered for two or three minutes. Serve over rice.

Language / Popular Polish transcription depends on Anglophone's speech [3]

POHNCH-kee (for many, maybe most Americans, aw or au will not produce the right result, the difference between cot and caught is disappearing in most of NAmerica).

This can work for Americans, but I don't know if it would work for British people.

Polish vowels

a = ah
e = eh
i = ee
o = oh
u = oo
y = ih

ą = ohn (ohm, ong, word finally maybe onh)
ę = ehn, (ehm, eng, if you want to use the old-fashioned word final, then maybe eh-oo (the oo after e is more distinctive than the nasalization).

before vowels

ci = chee
cie = chyeh
etc

czy = chih
cze = cheh
etc

chih roh-ZOO-myehsh?

At the end of a word or before a consonant, there's no realistic way of distinguishing them (as in wieś and wiesz) without diacritics or detailed explanation.

Also there's no reason an English speaking learner has to learn to _hear_ the difference (after more than 10 years I still don't hear it even though I understand spoken Polish just fine) as long as they can _produce_ a rough approximation of the difference.

Language / Polish Conditionals (okresy warunkowe or zdania warunkowe) [23]

I'm not convinced that this very thorough description would really be understood by most English speakers trying to learn Polish. note: The following criticism and suggestions are meant to be helpful rather than hostile.

For one, the conditional terminology you use seems to be part of the tradition of teaching English as a second language and nothing that native speakers are ever taught in school or even think about (the extent to which conditionals were covered in my US education was the admonition to say "If I were" instead of "If I was").

Giving so many gender/number combinations for each Polish example makes them look harder than they are too. This is a phobia of mine because of a guide I had that insisted on giving past forms as

Also, it makes the very simple Polish system seem more complicated than it really is. The learner has to work through the whole thing to find out (for instance) that Polish doesn't distinguish "If I had the money I'd go to Spain" (which could still happen) and "If I'd had the money, I'd have gone to Spain" (which cannot happen).

Gdybym miał pieniądze, pojechałbym do Hiszpanii.

For the English speaking Polish learner, I'd introduce jeśli/jeżeli and the kinds of tenses that can follow them.

Then quite separately, I'd talk about the single Polish conditional (which also does duty as a subjunctive, essentially it's an all round counterfactional).

I'd do that by giving the by forms separately

first person: bym
byśmy

second person (familiar): byś
byście

third person :
by

Then I'd point out that these always co occur with the past stem (which looks like the third person past tense and like it agrees with the subject in number and gender)

Then some basic word/morpheme rules, that the by forms usually occur after the first word in the clause and written together with it .

Lastly, I think

English:

looks more natural to me than

English one:

USA, Canada / I might be moving to Florida.... [36]

sledz, I never considered Sanibel part of Ft Myers for some reason (though I considered North Fort Myers more a neighborhood than a separate entity, I don't know what it's current status is). Mostly I disliked it for the traffic, for almost a year I had to drive through downtown Ft Myers (41) five days a week. Worst drivers in the continental US.

szarlotka, it's not a good idea to swim in any natural fresh water in Florida, alligators, cottonmouths and snapping turtles are the main attractions and there's a few more too (rattlesnakes take readily enough to water). Oh, and crocodiles have made a return in very south Florida.

Language / (part 2) Polish Language Pronunciation - Sample Words and Phrases [311]

Well, roughly (just because two languages are never completely identical)

nia = Italian gna
nie = gne
nio = gno
niu = gnu
ni = gni (do ni and gni contrast in Italian? do ñi and ni contrast in Spanish?)

I think theoreticall you could represent non-palatalized ni with nji (just as -sji- is like Italian or Spanish si) but I can't think of examples.

I'm not entirely sure if nii as in "do Hiszpanii" 'to Spain' is ni or nji.

Language / żeby / żebyś - when and how to use them? [3]

żeby

is a combination of the conjunction że (that) and the conditional particle by (roughly 'would', 'should' or subjunctive)

żeby is followed by an infinitive (impersonal) or a past stem (looks like third person singular of the past tense)

żebyś can only be followed by the past stem and only with second person singular (familiar) subject

żeby być = in order to be

żeby był = that he might be, that he be (subjunctive), that he should be

żebyś był = (same as above but with 'you' instead of 'he')

News / 14 year old rape victim from Warsaw denied abortion! [348]

This case is no longer an issue, the abortion did finally take place (on the last possible day).

Love / Age for Polish couples to get married + divorce rates + possessive guys [9]

Random observations:

Pre-marital sex has long been the norm in Poland. Typically a serious couple that might get married starts having sex. If they break up before getting married, well that can happen. On the other hand, if pregnancy results, the wedding plans are moved up (the proportion of visibly pregnant brides is pretty high). The parents may not be happy about this, but they did the same thing and their kids are liable to know it which doesn't give them much room for making sermons.

Random sleeping around has never been the norm and is very much looked down on.

So, very few Polish people expect a woman to be a virgin at marriage. On the other hand, the expectation is that sex has been restricted to serious relationships. Also note, many Polish women are not catholic enough to restrain from pre-marital sex but they are catholic enough to not use birth control. If you're not ready for parenthood and have a Polish girlfriend, take contraception into your own hands (so to speak).

I don't know if Polish guys are really that possessive but:
a) the things that make them jealous are different than the things that make western guys jealous
b) there's a psychotic sub-class that never knows when to let go (generally not violent but very annoying - a friend tells me how his wife's former suitor showed up at their honeymoon hotel).

Age of first marriage is trending up. I remember when female students expected to be married (at least engaged) by the end of their studies. That's just not the case anymore.

Divorce is also trending up. Formerly, a couple that would probably get divorced in the US would still live together but quietly agree to have their own (discreet) private lives. Now, they're more likely to get divorced.

One of the most common causes of divorce in Poland are meddling in-laws (his or hers). Young couples traditionally had to rely on help from parents and the parents used this to try to maximize their influence over the young couple, usually with bad results.

Travel / anyone put the new shengen rules to the test? [30]

I travelled within Shengen in April and the ticket people looked at my passport both ways. I don't know what would have happened if something were out of order...

Language / I know "się" is the only reflexive personal pronoun..but "jak się masz?" [34]

się is the only reflexive pronoun but .... it's also more.

One important function of się is related to transitivity. In essence, take a transitive verb (cieszyć = to make s.o. happy) add się and you have a new (non-reflexive) intransitive verb cieszyć się = be happy)

With jak się masz:

mieć = transitive, have sth, hold sth

mieć się = be in a certain condition, hold out (under circumstances)

Scandinavian languages do something similar by adding a dummy object 'det' (that, or Polish to)

Swedish: Hur har du det? (how do you have it?)

general note to everyone: the poster known as Michal knows nothing about _any_ language and anything he writes should be regarded as wrong until proven otherwise (and maybe even then).

Love / Is it true Polish people don't move in together that quick? [27]

She's taking advantage of:

a) Dutch boyfriend
b) you
c) a and b

there are no other options. No matter how kind she thinks her motivations are, the real world results are that she's using one (or both) of you and setting one (or both) of you up for heartbreak.

Time to make an ultimatum: Either she makes a quick, clean break from Dutch boyfriend and commits to you openly (as possible) or you walk.

Accept no excuses, and remember: the longer you draw it out and the more patient you are, the bigger the hurt you're setting yourself up for. If she's not ready now for a break she's not lesbian but the kind of bi-curious girl who'll go back to men once her curiosity is satisfied.

Language / I know "się" is the only reflexive personal pronoun..but "jak się masz?" [34]

I surely can (off the top of my head without consulting any references):

nominative: -
accusative: się, siebie
genetive: się, siebie
dative: se*, sobie
instrumental: sobą
locative: o sobie
vocative: -

when there are two forms the first is unaccented and the second is accented (only accented forms occur after prepositions) but się somtimes appears after prepositions too (especially, I think, przez)

* se is non-standard and very rarely written but frequent in some kinds of everyday spoken Polish

there's also an unaccented się, that I would write sie but hardly anyone ever does.

I could if it made any sense.

What I see is

Nice/beautiful. That's how it goes/is arranged into? a/the fucked up ???? of a jigsaw puzzle.

I think you (or the other person) mis-wrote głobie (no such word that I know) and maybe zjebany too (sure there wasn't an 'm' at the end?)

Love / Is it true Polish people don't move in together that quick? [27]

Forever? For a year? For how long? You need to **** or get off the pot (and she does too).
Remember, she's not doing right by anyone but herself at present, not you or the Dutch boyfriend. As long as you wait, you're a party to the wrong she's doing him (if that concerns you).

Love / Is it true Polish people don't move in together that quick? [27]

Sounds to me like she's made her choice: she'd rather be with an awful boyfriend than a (presumably) good girlfriend.

If she won't leave a loser like that for you, then mark my words, even if she does leave him, she'll dump you the moment a decent guy appears on the scene.

The only possible reason to stay (temporarily) is if she's planning on disappearing from his life in an untraceable way (sometimes necessary in cases of domestic violence and it does take preparation). But there's no indication from you that that's happening.

Law / URGENT-U.S. citizen needs help with Polish permanent residence visa app! [4]

I'm confused, I don't think you can't apply for a permanent visa till you've been in Poland for several years (shorter if you're married but still not right away). I think what you want is a typical first time work-permit visa which you have to receive in your country of residence (it can be renewed in Poland). Don't arrive in Poland without it unless you're willing to work off the books for a while.

I really doubt that they send the physical passport to Poland.

IME (long long ago) consulates do visa work on time.

Also, often in Poland there are two rates, the regular rate and a higher expedited rate. Ask if you can pay more to get it done faster, that's not a bribe, really.

Finally, members of Polish bureaucracy are often not really well informed. If I were you, I'd look up the web page for the "Wydział Spraw Cudzoziemców" (foreigner's department) of the Urząd Wojewódzki (local government agency) wherever it is you'll be in Poland. They're the people you'll have to satisfy once you're here. Avoid pages in English which are often out of date and have your fiance look at the Polish regulations and send an email or two (or even call on the phone, if they've dealt with you before generally things will go easier in person.

Good luck.

Work / Any english teachers in Poland here with tips to share? [55]


But you don't live in the lesson or get paid in the lesson or have to convince the secretary or whoever that you need that zawiadczenie today not tomorrow. Theoretically the office staff might know English, but practically this often means they know enough to say "no" or "tomorrow" or "those are the rules" and then tune anything you say right out of their heads. It's harder for them to tune out (even bad ) Polish and you can often get your way just so you'll leave them alone and stop pestering them.

The more Polish you know, the better things go outside the lesson.

History / Poland and Lithuania [161]

IME Polish people have generally warm feelings toward Lithuania but Lithuanian feelings toward Poland are much more .... complicated. A friend was in Vilnius and noted that a lot of people reacted negatively to Polish people (I've known other visitors who didn't encounter any hostility).

In the 90's there was some friction over the language of education for the Polish minority in Lithuania and the Lithuanian population in Poland. Both are theoretically bilingual but strongly wanted as much education as possible in their native language and not the national language. I think that's mostly been resolved. There was also an attempt to force Poles in Lithuania to adopt Lithuanian names but that didn't get very far and a compromise was worked out.

Some years ago there was an interview with someone from the Lithuanian government who said that there's a tendency in Lithuania to see Poland as more of a cultural threat than Russia. The reasoning is that Russian language and culture were forced on them and resistence was strong enough that they could be accomodated. On the other hand there was a long history of self-Polonization in some parts of Lithuanian society (Mickiewicz and Miłosz both came from Polish speaking Lithuanian families) so it was felt to be the bigger threat.

Also, at some point Lithuania modified it's alphabet to make it less like Polish and more like Czech (with letters like ž, è and š instead of ż, cz and sz)

FWIW

Law / URGENT-U.S. citizen needs help with Polish permanent residence visa app! [4]

If you're employed and having health insurance deducted you're covered (such as it is).

For everything else (including visa renewal): In Poland, it's easier to get things done in person. Very soon after your arrival in Poland go to the address below (with all the paperwork you can think of) explain your situation and ask what to do next. Polish bureaucracies are under no obligation to speak any language but Polish so bring your husband or some other reliable person to interpret. (hint: a lot of Polish people believe in being aggressive in bureaucratic offices which IME is very counterproductive, make sure the person who's interpreting for you has a cheery demeanor and will ask questions when they don't fully understand - again many Polish people don't)

Wydział Spraw Obywatelskich i Cudzoziemców
ul. Piotrkowska 103, 90-425 £ódź
e-mail: SO@lodz.uw.gov.pl
Infolinia: 0 801 456-457

again, this is the office you'll have to satisfy once you're here, so get the information directly from them.

see also:

uw.lodz.pl/index.php3?str=88

(scroll down to cudzoziemcy for some relevant pages) but be aware:
Poland's entry into the EU and Schengen have made some of the relevant regulations kind of .... useless and they'll probably be changed though it's hard to say when that will happen. But web-based information is liable to stay up after it's no longer valid (and information in languages other than Polish will only be modified at a later date).

Finally: A priceless survival skill for the Anglophone in Poland is the ability to function in uncertain, unresolved situations that can last up to a couple of months. Just keep keeping on and be ready for the unexpected.

Travel / anyone put the new shengen rules to the test? [30]

I'm pretty sure Spain is Schengen too, Switzerland isn't.

Travel / anyone put the new shengen rules to the test? [30]

Not yet, according to wikipedia (usual caveats apply) Switzerland is not yet Schengen but is scheduled to join November first of this year. yeah that when the rule should come into effect

News / Who is Poland's most prominent political agitator? [8]

Who doesn't?

Politics in Poland is all about grand performance, intrigue, and dressing room feuds (the average Polish politician can out-prima-donna any tempremental opera singer).

Work / Any english teachers in Poland here with tips to share? [55]


ESL teaching is a prime area where the adage about those who can't (ie learn languages) teach is uncomfortably close to the truth.

The worst are English teachers who've been here for years and almost brag that they haven't even tried to learn Polish. If I were one of their students I certainly would take them .... not very seriously.

News / End of voice-over on foreign films in Poland? [19]

IME Polish people are kind of surprised that so many non-Poles find voice-overs .... not very aesthetically pleasing (enormous understatement).

The interesting think about voice overs is that they completely ruin the movie for most native speakers of the language of the original, even if they understand Polish just fine. I don't mind voice overs on French movies (I don't know French) or even German and Spanish movies (both of which I do know to some extent) but I can't stand them with English language movies.

And subtitling is no magic English teaching substitute (or necessarily even a good aide). Good subtitles (meaning a good translation) will often be some distance from the original and the more literal the subtitles are, chances are the worse (and more confusing) the translation will be.

Also, subtitles rarely capture nuance or expressive use of language, the dialogue has to be abbreviated, often drastically (this happens with voice overs too for similar reasons). Interestingly, full dubbing actually allows for greater fidelity and expressiveness in translation as people hear faster than they read and the kinds of pauses that lektors need to set off dialogue by different characters don't have to be used.

Finally, I wouldn't put too much faith in this. This is basically a non-issue that gets proposed every couple of years by some famous-person or politician(s) and it never gets anywhere (there was an initiative in Gazeta Wyborcza a few years ago that resulted in .... nothing as far as I could tell. Most Polish people want to hear movies and not read them and forced conversion to subtitles would probably just decrease tv viewership (undoing the English teaching that's supposed to be going on). At the place where I rent dvds the most common question I hear from other customers is "does it have a voice over?" (that's good!) or "do you have to read?" (that's bad!).

Work / Moving to Poland in 3 weeks to study! [30]

Euros would go farther than dollars, but a thousand is enough to live on.

Poznan traditionally has about the worst night life in Poland for foreigners of any major city (but studying medicine you won't have so much time for that). Traditionally Poznanians had active social lives but visiting each other at home, not going out together. This has changed a lot in recent years but it's still not Warsaw.

Poznan is a very safe city for its size. Polish people are mostly friendly to visiting foreigners but the longer you're here the more you're expected to conform to local norms. Poznanians also have a reputation for being stand-offish (by Polish standards).

The younger and better educated the person the more likely they can carry on a conversation in something approaching English. But despite what anyone might tell you ahead of time, you really do need to learn Polish while here. Not least because IME Polish people aren't as smart or interesting or fun in English as they are in Polish.

The climate in Poznan is north central european, generally not much snow in winter but it can get pretty cold (though it rarely gets below -5 the coldest I've ever experienced was about -20 but that's very rare). Summers can be hot and muggy (overall not so bad this year). Air-pressure changes a lot and can have a bad effect on how you feel (the worst is a sudden drop in air pressure which can lead to horrible headaches in a large percentage of the people here, including me).

21 single guy from Norway? You won't have any trouble meeting Polish women (added bonus, if a Polish woman is interested in you but you're too slow, then she'll make the first move). Assuming that like most wesern guys here, you'll end up with a serious girlfriend, don't necessarily settle for the first Polish girl you meet or be so picky that none can meet your standards. Also realize that Polish women are used to making a lot of the decisions in relationships that you might like to make yourself (like how many beers you can have at a party , how to dress and how to budget your money - let her, she'll usually make better decisions than you would).

Polish students at the medical university (and international students who attend classes with them) are not necessarily fond of the students in the English-language program as they get preferential treatment in a lot of ways.